Chomp!

By Ron Aiken
November 15, 2013

More Steak! More Cookies! More Love!

Chomp! eats a lot of steak. A LOT. Like, four times a week. It’s his thing, kind of like switching between first and third person for no reason and with no warning. I know it’s frowned upon by people who think turtlenecks are summer wear, that a beige shawl is a year-round fashion accessory and were last laid in 1986. I get that. Chomp! doesn’t care, however. Chomp! does what he wants, which, thankfully for everyone, mostly comes down to eating lots of steak.

That is why I enjoy experimenting with preparations. Now that it’s too cold to really fire up the grill and do that noise, I’ve taken to cooking steaks directly in the oven. In the past I’ve done sears on the outside for five minutes a side then thrown it in the oven, but maybe it’s the cold, maybe it’s the laziness, maybe it’s the INSANE FLAVOR, but lately I’m throwing my marinated steaks right into the oven.

I recently cooked a beautiful couple of steaks this way for me and my sweetie with a preparation I’ve grown rather attached to here recently. Here’s what you do: First, purchase your favorite cut of meat. Because Chomp! eats steak in such stupefying quantities, Chomp! sticks to the affordable chuck roast cut…lotsa meat, lotsa flavor, low price. For my lady, I bought a N.Y. Strip…tender, nice size, consistently good.

Second, the marinade. Chomp!’s not going to lie to you; while the longer one can marinade meat the better, Chomp!’s marinade times typically equal the amount of time it takes to finish the marinade, place the meat in the pan and shovel it into the oven. You’ll be just fine the rest of your life if you take this approach, so no worries if you can’t let it sit. My marinade has been simple – so simple you may scoff initially, because I know that’s what you do. You’re a scoffer, you live a scoffing life and everyone knows that about you. It’s part of your charm, but also why people tend to resent you sometimes. Because seriously, must you scoff at everything?

I first coat the steak in honey. Liberally. SO liberally, in fact, that the Affordable Health Care Act is all like, Dude, c’mon now. Seriously? That’s WAY too much. And Chomp!’s all like, Oh yeah, Affordable Health Care Act? This coming from YOU, of all legislation???? Then the Affordable Health Care Act mumbles something about we’ll just see about me keeping the marinade recipe I like and walks out of the room, at which time Chomp! continues making his marinade.

After your beautiful red steak is coated in honey – AMERICAN honey, by the way, because Chomp! Is a REAL AMERICAN™  and does not use or condone those who use Canadian honey – coat that puppy liberally with paprika. I mean, put douse that thing like you’ve never doused before! Then, same procedure with black pepper and same procedure with minced garlic (you don’t have to go crazy with the garlic, however, unless you simply feel like it). Once you’ve done that, shake just a little Worcestershire sauce, a little soy sauce and a little teriyaki sauce over it and that’s it! Told you it was simple! Honey. Paprika. Black pepper. Garlic. Worcestershire sauce. Soy sauce. Teriyaki sauce.

Ballgame.

I put my oven on bake at 350 degrees, and if you want a medium N.Y. Strip, I’d pull it out at about 20 minutes, 18 for medium rare and 30 for well. Let it rest, then enjoy. Here’s the strip:

And here’s the whole dinner on the table, which I prepared for the sweetest of sweethearts and featured my favorite salad, a sweet combination of blackberries, raspberries and either blue cheese or gorgonzola with a raspberry-walnut vinaigrette. I also sprinkle, for crunch, a few handfuls from a package of peanuts and dried white and red raisins I get from the store from time to time.

As you can see, my steak is the larger one, my oven roast. With it, you slice it super-thin and it’s delicious. It also has the benefit of lasting for about three meals.

But that’s not all! Chomp! also bakes cookies, and we finished the meal with this batch of cookies using the leftover berries, leftover peanuts and raisins and some leftover Appenzaller cheese I had sitting around. Here’s what it looked like before hitting the oven:

That’s it for this week! Enjoy!

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